Further details are now leaking out regarding the story I reported last week of two settlers accused of terrorism. Then, the case was under gag order in Israel and I reported that two of the accused were Pini Shandorfi and Shneur Dana. At that point there was only one other known suspect who was a minor, and whose identity was not reported (curious Israeli authorities offer more privacy to Jewish minor terror suspects than Palestinian ones like Ahmed Manasreh).

Pini Shandorfi during IDF training. After refusing orders to evacuate an illegal outpost he was cashiered from army service.

Chaim Levinson has just reported in Haaretz that seven suspects were arrested, three of whom serve on active duty in the IDF. Three of the detainees are also brothers. From the Facebook post described below it would appear that the three brothers are Pini Shandorfi and two of his siblings. Five of the seven suspects are now imprisoned. A total of two of the seven arrested are minors.

Kahanist former MK Michael Ben Ari published an appeal in his Facebook page from Elazar Shandorfi, a cousin of Pini Shandorfi. Elazar attempts to rouse indignation at their arrest by noting that one currently served and another is an IDF veteran, that they are married. One of them ‘even’ has four children. As if all of those things mean a man would not kill a Palestinian given half a chance; or perhaps that such good Jewish men should be forgiven whatever they’ve done because they did it for a good cause: the Jewish people.

He inveighs with righteous indignation against a Shabak search of their homes–“as if they were terrorists, God forbid.” He even boasts that because of his family’s sacrifices on behalf of poor, wayward children, under other circumstances his family members would merit the Israel Prize!! How ironic that Shandorfi decries the “dark regime” of the Shabak and court system which have conspired to steal the freedom of his cousins. When the power of this regime is unleashed on Palestinians, he doesn’t seem to mind one iota! I would be more far more sympathetic if I heard even a murmur of disapproval from Shandorfi when Palestinians are in the gunsites.

Finally, among his other noteworthy statements is this Nixonesque declamation: “We are not a crime family, we are not terrorists.” Indeed, one wonders…

As one must do in these circumstances, the Haaretz article offers implicit clues as to the charges against some of the suspects. It notes that the security order prepared by the Shin Bet is signed by an agent named “Miguel” (which reminds me more of a character from Fawlty Towers than the Shin Bet!). It then says that he is the chief of one of the agency’s interrogation units, which “conducted the investigation at the Palestinian village of Duma.”

In an article heavily restricted by a security gag order, Haaretz is hinting around the edges that Shandorfi and other suspects were either involved in the original Dawabsheh arson attack, which killed three family members; or more likely they are being charged with setting a subsequent fire at the home of the brother of Saad Dawabsheh. I noted this theory in my earlier post about the Shandorfi-Dana arrest. Dawabsheh’s brother is the only eyewitness to the original attack and saw the murderers, which is why the settlers would wish to intimidate or kill him.

If I was a betting man I’d bet a few thousand dollars that my hunch is correct.

“… or perhaps that such good Jewish men should be forgiven whatever they’ve done because they did it for a good cause: the Jewish people.”

Ben Gurion in 195O:

“I’m not the justice minister, I’m not the police minister and I don’t know all criminal acts committed here, but as defense minister I know some of the crimes, and I must say the situation is frightening in two areas: 1) acts of murder and 2) acts of rape.” So declared Prime Minister and Defense Minister David Ben-Gurion in 1951 before dropping a bombshell: “People in the [General] Staff tell me, and it’s my view as well, that until a Jewish soldier is hanged for murdering Arabs, these acts of murder won’t end.”

Ben-Gurion was speaking at a cabinet meeting on abolishing the death penalty. Jewish-Arab tensions were high following the 1948 War of Independence, and there was also a problem with infiltrators: Arab refugees seeking to return to the homes and fields they left during the war. Consequently, Jewish murders of Arabs had proliferated, and some ministers considered the death penalty necessary to solve this problem.

The cabinet discussion of 66 years ago is particularly interesting in light of this week’s very different cabinet discussion about a soldier who killed a wounded Palestinian terrorist in Hebron after he no longer posed a threat.
“In general, those who have guns use them,” Ben-Gurion asserted, adding that some Israelis “think Jews are people but Arabs aren’t, so you can do anything to them. And some think it’s a mitzvah to kill Arabs, and that everything the government says against murdering Arabs isn’t serious, that it’s just a pretense that killing Arabs is forbidden, but in fact, it’s a blessing because there will be fewer Arabs here. As long as they think that, the murders won’t stop.”

Ben-Gurion said he, too, would prefer fewer Arabs, but not at the price of murder. “Abolishing the death penalty will increase bloodshed,” he warned, especially between Jews and Arabs. “Soon, we won’t be able to show our faces to the world. Jews meet an Arab and murder him.”

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